One Year Later!

Somewhere in the midst of all the exhausting work of fighting cancer and still working and being a mom, I lost the ability to update this blog. Just in case you thought I didn't make it through, here I am to tell you: I am here. I am rocking my post-chemo pixie cut, my soft silicone foobies, a nosering, a devoted Chihuahua, and a life much more rich and full after facing such a dark time.

I still love to drink Cosmos and laugh with my amazing friends (this is my beautiful vet school bestie, Melissa). That much hasn't changed.

 

Sooo... let's see... where did I leave off? I think I got to the part where my hair fell out. Right. So we did indeed have a "hair-shaving party" and my whole family came to help me try to laugh through this depressing admission of illness. I was feeling terrible from my 2nd round of the nasty AC chemo, and really not enjoying that my hair was coming out in clumps in the shower. I really wanted to be able to shave my head and donate it to Locks of Love, but I washed it and then couldn't dry it or it would've been all over my bathroom floor, so I admitted defeat and just... got rid of it. Sigh. My beautiful long blonde hair, a part of who I have always been. I told myself "it's just hair, it will grow back" and tried hard to stay positive, but man, that was rough. On May 27, 2015, I sat on a chair out in our backyard and let it just happen. It was an ironically beautiful, sunny spring day. My sister wielded the clippers, and my sweet nephew Brooks bagged up the clumps. My niece Cadence did her best to keep me laughing as she documented with photos - and I love her for trying. My hubby Kevin was my rock through this experience. If you are reading this as a chemo patient about to lose your hair: I do not recommend trying to make this into a "party". Loved ones gathering around looking sad and awkward while you shave your head just does not feel fun. Lock yourself in the bathroom with your spouse or best friend and perform this sad act privately. Here are some head-shaving photos. I was trying my best to be brave and happy but was kinda dying inside a little.

 

 

My sweet Ashlyn May telling me it will be okay.



 Doing my best to triumph over this terrible day.

 

Okie-dokie. So now that that's out of the way (phew.... it only took me a year to gather the courage to post about that), we can move on with the story.

 

So chemo went on through the whole summer. The treatments themselves were actually pretty fun (!!). I became good friends with the woman I mentioned in my last post, Kayla, and her husband Andy, and we basically hysterically laughed in our chemo chairs every 2 weeks together. I also had a friend or family member join me for the treatments: My mom, dad, sister; Kevin (x2), my friends Meg, Dean, and Melissa. Have I mentioned how awesome my support system was? So they laughed along with us and we had an amazing little party each time in the back corner of the chemo room.

Kayla and me at one of our boisterous "chemo parties". Not joking... chemo infusions were a blast
thanks to this amazing woman right here.

Then I headed home for 3-4 days in bed while summer weekends took place around me. Pretty depressing. But we got through it. The kids, after going through the whole "Mommy has a boo-boo chest, be gentle" thing, got used to now hearing "Mommy is sick and needs to rest right now." I would return to work on the Tuesday of each post-chemo week and carry on with business as usual. Amazingly, I usually felt pretty okay, and it was shockingly comforting to be the doctor instead of the patient - to get to help others. I had one hiccup when my red cells dropped and I felt terribly weak and anemic, landing in the hospital with a blood transfusion. Other than that, though, life went on as usual. All my clients remarked on my gorgeous new "hair cut" and "highlights", tee-hee, awkward. Only one nasty rotten woman felt the need to point out directly to me that I was wearing a wig and demanded to know why. How rude. Let's just say that day wasn't so smooth... but I picked myself up and moved on. As usual.

 



Check out my awesome new haircut. Please don't ask what salon I use.

 



Wearing a wig and pretending to be "normal" was a pretty strange experience. That blasted wig was hot, itchy, and just generally annoying. I felt incredibly fake wearing it, but the only other option was to wear a hat or scarf and announce to my clients that I had cancer. No, thank you. I wore comfy cotton caps at home and around town if I felt *safe* doing so. It was like I was living a double life, trying to keep track of "people who know" and "people who don't know". Yuck. Very uncomfortable. I really hated this part of losing my hair the most. I just really didn't want every single person to know my business, but to have people not know felt wrong too. It's so hard when you have an obvious outward sign of being sick and just want to suffer with some dignity and privacy.

 

 

Relaxing with my girls in the backyard on a hot summer day.

 

 



The end of summer finally came, and with it the end of chemo. I was pretty exhausted but otherwise okay - just some mild numbness in my fingers from the Taxol, which has since resolved. I pulled myself together enough to pack the family up for our annual week-long vacation in Maine. The trip was fun but really tiring. I was NOT going to let cancer take this trip away from me, but rocking a chemo cap on the beach is super uncool. We did get some much-needed family bonding time, though. Priceless.

 

Somewhere in the middle of the summer, I went back to Dana Farber in Boston to talk to my really smart oncologist there, Dr. Sara Tolaney. She had recommended that, after chemo, I join a clinical trial for BRCA-1 positive, triple-negative, stage 2 patients in which they were studying an oral drug to prevent cancer recurrence, and I was all about that. So when I went in to talk to her about the trial, she asked about my treatment. I told her that I was getting through chemo, and then would be done. No radiation treatment was needed, according to my local oncologist (who shall remain unnamed). Long story short, Dr. Tolaney quietly raised an eyebrow - she knew that I should DEFINITELY have radiation because of the aggressive type of cancer I had and the spread to my lymph node. So we got that arranged back here at home, and about 2 weeks after finishing chemo, I started 6 weeks of radiation with a wonderful, awesome, amazing radiation oncologist named Dr. Aryal DeJesus, who developed a deep friendship with not just me, but also my little radiation buddy, Shayla. She and her receptionist Debbie spoiled her rotten while they irradiated my entire left chest and armpit area 36 times.

 

Dr. DeJesus was such a blessing to us. She is just the coolest, most compassionate oncologist ever.

 

I magically sailed through radiation with very little skin burning, religiously slathering myself with aloe and calendula oil daily. My treatments ended around Halloween. I got my port removed, and my hair was starting to grow back.

 

So remember how depressing it was to lose my hair? Well, let me tell you -- when your hair starts to grow back from chemo, it's the most uplifting feeling ever. Just to have peach fuzz, then a buzz cut, then a spiky-rockstar girl 'do, makes you giddy. I felt so funky with my new hair that I went and got my nose pierced to match my new look and to celebrate being a SURVIVOR. Wow. It felt really good to be able to say that.

Yes, I really wore this hair to work. Freedom from the wig -- amazing. One client said, "Wow, now THAT's a brave haircut!" And I thought... yeah, you don't know the half of it. ;)

Starting to have a real lesbian/punk chick hairdo now. Told myself that people totally choose to wear their hair like this all the time. I became obsessed with Chihuahuas somewhere around this time. That little creature on the left is my new dog, Lupita. How stinking cute is that face? Talk about pet therapy. If only she wasn't impossible to housetrain...

 

That gets my story pretty much up-to-date. I am almost to the end of this long process of getting cancer the hell outta my body. Double mastectomy - check. Chemo x 8 treatments - check. Radiation - check. I am midway through the one-year clinical trial and go to Boston once a month for checkups, which has been great. I get to see my dear vet-school friend Debbie and stay overnight with her and her sweet family. There are really no other treatments available to prevent recurrence for Triple Negative patients like there are for estrogen-positive breast cancer patients, so hopefully the Olaparib drug they are studying on me (or maybe I'm in the placebo group - boo) will prove to have a big benefit to us in years to come. Last Friday, April 22, I had my final soft silicone implants put in and no longer have those hard, uncomfortable tissue expanders in my chest. Surgery was painful but it already feels, and looks, so much better. My plastic surgeon, Dr. Susan Gannon, is so talented and wonderful. This fall I will be getting my ovaries +/- uterus removed laparascopically to prevent ovarian cancer due to my BRCA mutation. Yeeeeeah, we don't want any more cancer, thanks. :) I am also planning to take a road trip down to Maryland in November to see Vinnie Myers, the world's-best nipple tattoo artist. Can't wait for that! Having no nipples is sad, folks.



 

What a year this has been. Lots of sadness, tears, fear, and pain... but also great things like: new friends, like Kayla. Getting to reconnect with my old friend Jen from high school, who helped me tremendously - she is also a recent young survivor and talked me through some tough days. Deeper connections with my existing friends, and realizing I have the truest, most loyal, loving friends on the planet (Meg, Dean, Beth, Melissa, Bizarro Beth, Tara, Lakshmi, Jenna, Steph... the list keeps going). Bonding with my kids and family. An incredible appreciation for life and living each day to the fullest. Feeling loved and supported. Watching my entire neighborhood rally around me to bring huge meals, cards, and gifts for me and the girls; even doing our laundry and mowing our lawn for weeks on end. Obscenely thoughtful and generous care packages constantly arriving in the mail from my vet school girls - Sharon, Debbie, Rachel, Holly, Krishna, and Jasmine.Visits and phone calls from my most favorite people. Finding out that our family carries this rare cancer gene so that my mom and sister can do preventive surgeries, and the next generation doesn't have to get cancer if they also carry the mutation. Feeling like I kicked this thing in the ass, and showed my girls how to be tough when life gets hard. Knowing that I am stronger than cancer.

"Yes they're fake, the real ones tried to KILL ME." Love this shirt that I wore to the 
Breast Cancer walk in October. 
My friend Michah made me this beautiful pink ribbon scarf.

With my dad, girls, hubby, nephew and niece at the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. Such a fun day - it got freezing cold and snowed but we still had a blast!

Yes, that's right, I'm a cancer-fighting superhero. I raised over $3500 and was presented with a pink Pacesetter Cape.

 

And that, my friends, is where we are. Here is a silly picture I took yesterday after I dried my hair and ended up looking like a middle-aged Midwestern hockey mom. Or Kate Gosselin. Yeesh. Growing out my hair is going to be a long process, but I'm enjoying it in all it's crazy stages. I got some blonde highlights and I'm feeling more like myself - but it is definitely a new self. I am not the same woman I was one year ago, and I actually couldn't be happier about that.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading, and for sharing in my story. And don't worry, I will keep posting as my hair grows back and life goes on, and on, and on... for a really long time.

 

Xoxo,

Melanie

 

 

 

 

 



 



Soldiering On Through Chemo

I wrote this post in May 2015 and it never posted to the blog... so here it is, one year later:

Today I had my second AC treatment -- so now we're 2 down, 6 to go. The nurses brought us over and sat us next to a really nice 31-year-old woman there with her sister for chemo. She has two young kids and was diagnosed about a month ago with Stage 3 estrogen-receptive invasive ductal carcinoma. We chatted about our experiences and got to know each other a little bit. She was really nice and positive, and it was so nice to meet another woman going through this at the same time. She has already lost her hair and had on an adorable hat, so I asked her where she got it and ordered a couple for myself on Amazon. It's amazing that everyone you meet along this journey can be a source of knowledge and support!

I have already been hit with the queasiness tonight, but it's not too terrible. Going to stick to tea, fiber toast and Miralax this evening, haha. Tomorrow I have to go get my Neulasta shot to increase my white cell count, but other than that we'll be laying low. Ashlyn woke up this morning with the bright red "slapped cheeks" rash on her face that means she has a virus called "Fifth Disease", so she ended up having to stay home with Shayla and Donna last minute today. You can't make this stuff up. At least it's nothing too serious, and by the time the rash appears, the virus is no longer contagious.

I returned to work last Saturday, and shockingly this week went really well! It was so nice to see all my coworkers again, and to be a doctor again rather than a patient! It feels good to use my brain, help people, and of course, snuggle the cute animals. A really wonderful couple in their 60's came to see me with their brand-new puppy on Tuesday and the woman looked at me with tears in her eyes. "We don't know if we should be doing this whole puppy thing right now. Our 37-year-old daughter died last year of breast cancer, and we're raising her 3- and 6-year old kids." My stomach dropped out my you-know-what, but rather than running out of the room like I wanted to, I sat next to her and we talked. She was obviously overwhelmed but looking for some comfort and healing in her life, and for those sweet children. I examined the cute little pup and he was adorable, gentle, and healthy. I reassured her that he's a great little dog and that I think he will be therapeutic for them. She seemed to leave feeling happy and relieved after we talked. THAT is the kind of thing that makes my job worthwhile and makes up for some of the bad days.

The next puppy I saw that day was an 8-week-old Eskimo Spitz who was beyond adorable. I love this breed because of the Eskimo my mother-in-law rescued when I was in vet school. Puppy kisses just have a way of making everything seem better, don't they?